A Nightmare That Could Be Worse than 9/11

After 9/11, an event that Americans and their allies will never forget, the United States focused on a war on terrorism. There is, however, a threat that has been largely ignored—the threat of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), noted byInvestor’s Business Daily. In 2004 and 2008, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (also known as the EMP Commission) released its reports on how to protect the United States from an EMP. Despite its recommendations, little progress has been made in protecting the country from an EMP attack and its catastrophic consequences.

An EMP is a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy caused by the rapid acceleration of charged particles. Nuclear and non-nuclear weapons or geomagnetic storms can cause an EMP. An EMP would disrupt electronics, transmission distribution centers, fuses, and power lines, sending the United States back to the 19th century. While an EMP does not kill people, millions would die as the distribution of food, transportation, and delivery of a basic health care would collapse.

Manmade causes of an EMP include a nuclear weapon detonated at a high altitude. Intercontinental-range ballistic missiles are one of the possible means of delivery for such a scenario. Short-range, less technologically challenging, nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles launched off U.S. shores would deliver a similarly devastating attack. North Korea currently possesses nuclear weapons, and its missiles can reach Hawaii and Alaska. Iran continues to improve the range of its ballistic missiles and work towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability. A robust missile defense is essential for protection from this type of attack. Such a missile defense system, composed of Aegis ballistic missile defense capable ships; Aegis Ashore, a land-based missile defense component; and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle capabilities, can deprive the opponent of the opportunity to deliver a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile and cause an EMP in the first place.

But an EMP could be inflicted without an organized group behind it. With the right equipment, a lone terrorist could cause a blackout of a city—with commercially available equipment. Time is running short. For about $200 million, the United States can harden the major transformers associated with large metropolitan areas. This would allow more people to survive the consequences of an EMP. If the electrical power grid were destroyed, it would take years to replace critical transformers, since only a few countries build them; it takes more than a year to make one transformer. The United States can and has the obligation to prevent another “failure of imagination.” The time to act is now.

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After reading the book "One Second After" this has become the most serious threat I can imagine. I fear no one will pay attention to defending against this threat until it's too late and, as the title of the book warns "One second after and EMP attack, it's too late to do anything about it". Attacks like 9-11 have disrupted and changed our lives. But an EMP at a national level, would destroy it permanently.

Apparently the attitude of this White House and other elected officials is, "Not to worry!!!! We will let Israel take care of Iran." It seems to me that for the past 20 years or so, our plan of attack on our problems has left us "a day late and a dollar short."

Why do we put up with this kind of ineptness? There are only 535 elected officials in Washington plus the President. Can't we find at least that many people who care about this country enough to at least be proactive?

The US government (Jamie Gorelick) prevented the FBI and CIA from stopping the 9/11 terroist using the same anti domestic spying memo originally crafted to keep the FBI and DOD anayist from investigating the illegal Chinese contributions to the DNC for the Clinton campaign.
While most military equipment is designed to deal with RFI, EMI & EMP there are no similar protections built into civilian autos, planes, trains etc. or the power grid.
I guess the correct answer is probably nothing will be done to stop Iran and their Russian allies.

Finally someone who gets it and says it. That is the truth, Gore-lick (great name). She built the wall and the problem is the 535 "leaders" let her skate. Not only did she skate, they let take $25 Million dollars out of Fanny Mae. These people are worse as human beings than anything the Mafia could ever imagine.

This, and the fact that the Senate killed the $200 million Grid Act, have not been mentioned, to my knowledge, by any Republican candidates. This should be in the discussions due to the potential consequences of not acting. How many hundreds of millions do they think is an acceptable number of casualties? And, don't forget (for the doubting Thomases) that NASA is predicting potentially lethal solar events in the next few years, starting in 2012.

First, the pulse is a short term event like a bolt of lightening meaning that you need to know in advance that it is imminent and take preventive action, otherwise it is too late. And second, only energized electrical equipment will be affected, so the electronic equipment must be turned on/operating. Third, missiles are hardened against the effect of the pulse at high cost.

So, to eliminate the effect of the pulse, all electronics would need to be hardened. I trust the commission will tell us how to do that and the cost.

There is more to this issue and the commission needs to fill us in on the details.

This administration will do nothing to ensure we could live beyond an attack like this. This president is on his way to making America a 2nd or 3rd world nation, by his own desire and choices of action. Let's pray that we can elect a true American patriot BEFORE such an attack can take place and that person has the wisdom to begin strategic planning and setting up a shield to prevent such attacks on day one.

An EMP would also disable some equipment not connected to a mains supply or digital network,
depending on impulse power, vulnerability of equipment etc. A battery-powered tube radio would
survive and be a good investment to receive news from surviving AM transmitters.

Remember that "missle" that was fired off the ca. coast this year and no one knew what was what?The Pentagon said "its not ours,it looks like a jet" then the FAA said no they're were no flights in that area.LMAO then they said it was an optical illusion off the water.They video clearly showed a ballistic missle.
I believe it was a test run….I believe our days are numbered unless our govt. quits giving Pakistan billions of dollars(12 last year) and starts protecting our country and its citizens.

Nuclear weapons can be designed to release most of their energy in an EMP . This could result in an E-field of 50,000 volts/meter at the ground level. This would be a likely method of attack on the US, since power and communications nets, etc., would be disabled first. Unfortunately it would be very difficult to guard against such an attack. The direction of the E-field would probably be parallel to the ground, resulting in maximum damage to horizontal conductive materials.

I've been researching on how to get prepared for an EMP all month since there's great sites up for Preparedness Month. I've been listening to EMPact Radio's Podcasts every day. This Thursday they are having a guy named James Wesley Rawles back on their show, it's LIVE at 6pm. He's going to be answering people’s questions that call in, and he's going to be talking about EMP and how to get prepared for a hit. I think you'd enjoy listening to this show. Here's the link if you want to listen: http://empactradio.org/prepcast/ppc21-james-wesle…

A couple of comments: Standing under a 500 KV transmission line and you can easily obtain 50 kv/meter.
I can flicker a 4-foot Fluorescent light bulb. Does my car quit running? Sorry. The other thing to remember with vehicles is, your car is a Faraday cage already, that's why it's the safest place to be in a lighting storm. The likelyhood of an EMP messing with your car is very slight. Now, because of the size of our grid and conductance/coupling, and subsequent harmonics/reactance "waves" cause by a massive solar coronal ejection, yes, there is well established reason to fear one of these, however, we continuously monitor the sun and power companies can safeguard the existing grid by decoupling it. ALSO, only the US and Russia have the ability to generate a meaningful weaponized EMP. I'm not that worried. (But then I do have my own 25 KW diesel generator and enough powder, brass and bullets to make 6,000 rounds.)

I know I posted on this blog article before talking about EMPact Radio, but for the people who did go listen to that radio show and enjoyed it, I wanted to let you know that next week another really great guy is going to be on their show. November 2nd at Noon Chet Nagel will be on. So if you want to go listen to that one if you enjoyed James Wesley Rawles that I was talking about before, or if you didn't get a chance to listen to that one, here's the link for next Wednesdays: http://empactradio.org/pvp/episode73-chet-nagel/

Most of the people we elect to represent us, don't represent us at all. They only care about themselves. I don't know how we can stop this. We put them in office and then they turn their backs on us and do everything they can to make our lives harder by taking more of our hard earned money and doing stupid and selfish things with it instead of protecting us and helping us. I wish we could kick EVERYONE out of office and start over with some honest and intelligent people who only have America's best interests at heart.

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